News Center

In order to keep abreast of the start-up of the industrial textile industry in 2022 and provide targeted advice to enterprises, industries and government departments, the China Industrial Textile Industry Association recently carried out an online survey in the spring of 2022 in the industry.

Basic Situation of 1. Interviewed Enterprises

Since the questionnaire was distributed on February 14, 312 questionnaires were collected as of February 21, excluding duplicate and other invalid questionnaires, totaling 295 valid questionnaires. From a regional perspective, the interviewed companies are mainly concentrated in Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, accounting for 67.46 of the total. The remaining interviewed companies are mainly distributed in Guangdong, Shanghai, Hebei, Anhui, Fujian, Henan and Hubei, basically covering my country. The main producing areas of industrial textiles. From the perspective of industry distribution, the interviewed companies are mainly distributed in the fields of safety and protective textiles, medical and sanitary textiles, non-woven coils, rope nets, filtration and separation textiles, and other fields of industrial textiles and fiber and equipment industries. Some companies also submitted questionnaires.

In terms of scale, 9.83 percent of the companies surveyed had annual sales revenue of more than $1 billion, 8.14 percent had sales revenue between $0.5 billion and $1 billion, 34.24 percent had sales revenue between $0.1 billion and $0.5 billion, and 14.24 percent were below scale.

2. January-February 2022 Industry Operation

(I) industry starts running smoothly

The respondents were highly satisfied with their business conditions in the first two months, with 11.53 per cent believing that the current business conditions were very good, 40.34 per cent believing that the business conditions were relatively good, and 42.37 per cent believing that the business conditions were average, as shown in Figure 1. Compared with the survey in the same period last year, the proportion of enterprises that believe that their business conditions are very good and relatively good decreased by 1.87 percentage points and 11.72 percentage points respectively, and the proportion of enterprises that believe that their business conditions are average increased by 9.9 percentage points.

Indexing the business situation, the industry's prosperity index from January to February was 73.1, which was significantly lower than the same period last year (81.7), but still much higher than the boom-bust line (50). In terms of different fields, the prosperity of filtration and separation textiles, thread belts, paper-making textiles, military textiles, equipment and accessories is relatively high. Among them, the prosperity index of military textiles reaches 83.3. The prosperity index of medical and sanitary textiles and non-woven fabrics is relatively low but still above the prosperity line, as shown in Figure 2 (Note: The index in this report takes 50 as the critical point, A value above 50 indicates that the indicator is in an upward range, with the higher the index value, the higher the growth rate).

(II) market demand remains stable

Regarding the current order situation, the interviewed companies generally said that the order volume has increased, but the growth rate is not large. The domestic order index is 65.7, and the international order index is 57.3, which is basically the same as the same period last year (domestic 66, international 57). Specific to the situation of enterprise orders in hand, 34.24 percent of the interviewed enterprises said that the company has a relatively stable and continuous source of orders, 8.81 percent of the enterprises said that the orders in hand can support the production for more than 3 months, nearly 20% of the enterprises' orders can support the production for less than 3 months, and 24.41 percent of the enterprises' orders can support the production for less than 1 month, 12.88 percent of companies said orders in hand could support half a month of production.

(III) resumption of work and production momentum is good

Due to the recurrence of the epidemic during the Spring Festival, the "local New Year" initiative was mentioned for the second year in a row, so the resumption of work and production of enterprises in the past two years is significantly better than in previous years. As of late February, nearly three-quarters of the companies surveyed said that all workers had arrived, and 15.59 percent said that about 75 percent of workers had arrived. 20.34 per cent of the enterprises surveyed have been producing at full capacity, 34.92 per cent have recovered 80 per cent of their production capacity, 60 per cent have recovered to 27.12 per cent, and about 5 per cent have recovered less than 40 per cent of their production capacity.

Rising operating costs of (IV) enterprises

The prices of the main raw materials in the industrial textile industry have entered an upward channel since 2021 and are still at a high level in early 2022, with the raw material price index reaching 83.7, with nearly 70% of the enterprises surveyed saying that raw material prices have risen to varying degrees and nearly 30% saying that they have risen by more than 10%. The labor cost of enterprises continued the upward trend for many years, and the labor cost index was 83.2, which was higher than the level of the same period last year (74). The rise in raw material costs and labor costs has led to varying degrees of increase in the product prices of some enterprises, but nearly 60% of the enterprise product prices remain basically unchanged, and the enterprise product price index is 56.9, which is lower than the raw material price and labor cost index.

3. 2022 Year-round Judgment

For the development of the whole year of 2022, the confidence index of the surveyed enterprises is 65.6, and 71.53 percent of the enterprises are optimistic about the development of the whole year. By field, companies in the fields of filtration and separation textiles, geotechnical and construction textiles, rope nets, and military textiles are more optimistic about their business expectations in 2022, while medical and health textiles and nonwovens companies are more cautious about their forecasts for the year in the face of slowing demand for epidemic prevention materials, as shown in Figure 3.

From the perspective of enterprise scale, enterprises with annual sales of more than 0.5 billion yuan are more optimistic about the forecast of the industry for the whole year, and enterprises below the scale are the least optimistic about the situation for the whole year. Specific to individual indicators, the annual domestic order index of the interviewed companies was 70.8, and the international order index was 64.8, both higher than the level of the previous two months; the annual production index was 75.0, the income index was 73.5, and the profit index was 64.6.

The confidence of enterprises is also reflected in the intention of investment in fixed assets. 64.41 percent of the companies surveyed said they have new investment plans in 2022, with planned investment projects focusing on capacity expansion, upgrading existing equipment and building new plants. Enterprises with investment plans are mainly concentrated in the fields of safety and protection textiles, non-woven fabrics and medical and sanitary textiles.

For the current difficulties faced by enterprises in the process of operation, the increase of operating costs and the decline of market demand are the two most selected by the interviewed enterprises. The lack of professional talents, labor shortage and difficulties in overseas market expansion are also the problems reflected by enterprises, as shown in Table 1.

With regard to the external challenges faced by enterprises, the problems reflected by the interviewed enterprises mainly focus on the large fluctuations in raw material prices and the excessive expansion of industry production capacity. in addition, the obstruction of business activities, high sea freight and recruitment difficulties are also problems reflected by enterprises, as shown in Table 2.

In the face of a complex environment and fierce competition, the interviewed companies believe that their competitive advantages are mainly concentrated in innovation capabilities, customer relationships, product quality and brand influence. 26.1 percent of each company believes that the company is in a growing segment and the company has an excellent management team, as shown in Table 3.

4. Conclusion

In 2020 and 2021, the development of the industrial textile industry affected by the epidemic experienced a large fluctuation, it is expected that the industry will re-enter the growth channel in 2022, but the current external environment is still complex and severe, the industry "steady growth" still faces some uncertainties. Since 2022, the state has intensively introduced a series of policies and measures to support the development of the manufacturing industry. The industry will make full use of these favorable policies, strengthen technological innovation and product development, promote digital transformation and green production of enterprises, and actively expand new applications and new markets. Achieve high-quality development of the industry.